Well it's been 1 year since the newsletter started and 25 editions of the newsletter have been pumped out. It's been interesting watching the newsletter evolve as it has, we started with 5 or 6 people, and now we have more than 20 people and going stronger than ever before. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the newsletter in the past year and thanks to all who will contribute this year, the newsletter would not be where it is today without your commitment and dedication. Also i'd like to thank our readers, you are the reason we keep publishing the newsletter so thanks for your support over the past year.

Welcome to the 25th edition of this newsletter and it is another jam packed edition for the mess hall. This fortnight we are providing you with have the latest hot topics with ARMY of GOD, an analysis of the assault odds calculator plugin by Minister Masket, more about the nuclear spoils feature by stahrgazer and some valentines day advice, CC style from FoxMists. If that isn't enough, we also have an interview with everyones favourite off-topic poster pimpdave, another tale from the elf and a story for all those who have suffered from bad dice by deathcomesrippin. Hope you enjoy it!

So you've come round to the fact that you're not being cheated by the dice. Excellent. Now you want to get down to the business of winning all those games you joined. Unfortunately, the luck factor means you can't win every game, but there are things you can do to increase your chances. Take the "Assault Odds" calculator for example. Now before I start (and if you're interested), do open up the link at the bottom in a new tab or window, because - like the Dice Analyser - it's fairly visual based, so you'll understand the description better if you're looking at the thing.Done? Good. For starters, ignore everything but the top three rows. This is the "Quick Calculator" part, and it very handily calculates the odds of success against your opponent(s), as opposed to you doing a quick number-crunch in your head and then subsequentially wondering where it all went wrong. Take the example already there on the calculator. An attacking army of 5 against a defending one of 3 has a 64.2% chance of success. The calculator automatically saves your entries to save you typing them out again, and if you need more, you can click the "Add Calc" button just underneath to add more blank rows. You even get a grand total percentage of winning all the battles you add in. Now what is that comma doing seperating the 8 and the 4 in the second row? Well that's how you add armies from different territories to the calculation, and it works with defenders too. Below this we have the "Pathfinder" section. Whereas the QC works best for single battles, the Pathfinder calculates your odds of successfully attacking a sequence of territories in the same turn. So firstly you choose the territory you're attacking from from the dropdown menu, then add your army number in brackets. Then you choose the valid bordering territory and add it's defenders. This one step will calculate the odds anyway, and you can add your next moves in the rows below. When you're done, you'll be presented with a total percentage of your chance of winning the lot. Finally, at the bottom we have the "Statistics" part. This will use your calculation from the QC part to tell you how many of your attackers are likely to survive, both in "minimum" and "exactly" columns. Don't get too attached to this part though. They are just numbers after all, not real soldiers. And that's it. For tips and the option to download this, here's the link I really hope you clicked on when I told you to: http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=83451

A word of warning however. At the time of writing you can only use this if you are using either Firefox with Greasemonkey or Google Chrome. So if you use IE or another browser, you're buggered.

Early last year a.sub started a thread in General Discussion to work on his pick up lines. (Don’t lie, we all know you were really just looking for tips!) I found this to be an interesting idea and delved into what I thought would be moderately amusing and at least give me a heads up for the real desperate sorts that need this sort of help. Well, I was wrong. I was so very wrong. It was not moderately amusing. It was bloody hilarious and as lame as a one legged rabbit (hey! Not that kind of leg, you pervert!). And you know, it’s that time of year! Valentine’s Day! So I now present to you some of the more memorable pickup lines I came across. (This will also help you avoid certain… people… if you know what I mean)

It turned out that some keywords (and names) were practically required usage.

(Honestly “freestyle” was probably the most common. So common that I couldn’t force myself to add them here… Seriously. Painful.)And then there were the creative sorts:

“Map EditionSweetie, I know you are wondering where our relation is headed, and I've had 8 Thoughts about it. I would like to enter your Forbidden City, but don't want to move too fast causing you to Duck and Cover. This may sound like Madness, but please let me Land, and Sea where it takes us. You have shown me a New World of romance, I used to always just Battle for a rack. We've already tried a manage a trois, so maybe we can Conquer 4 and listen to the Wales. And if you were my Spanish buddy, I would want to Rail you, ese. What? I've been too vulgar? Baby don't go! Okay, well I will CCU later...” sully800

(We are now taking donations for the “Hobbies 4 Sully” fund!)Some people were kinda cute with their lameness. This was much appreciated.

“How would you like to travel world together? I was thinking maybe E2, S3 or A12, as they are all so beautiful this time of year.” Jpcloet

“It'll be worth the 72 hour ban for the things I want to say and do to you.” GENERAL STONEHAM

"Babe, I'm not like the other guys. I don't nuke all over myself." AndyDufresne

“ whoops, sorry baby, was a slip of the finger on the button" clapper011

(We’re guessing she has heard this line before )

AND,

“Hey big guy, if you're UP for it,come over here and show me how good you are at Escalating..” Robinette

Well. You gotta love a girl that knows what she wants, huh? If y’all are into self-torture, are ridiculously bored, or just plain sadistic, jump over to the thread and share the wealth! Your lameness will be noted and appreciated by others just like you!

A couple of months ago I wrote about wanting to expand my horizons from 1v1 Speed Crack (Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!) to team games and game variants. Some call them mutants. The game variants even. It's been an interesting couple of months.

Here is an example: I am 8 unique wins away from my first freestyle medal. Which doesn't sound that hard... except that I really, really suck at freestyle and haven't gotten the hang of clickies. At all. Cause I suck. Especially on my laptop. With the small screen. And the stupid mouse pad. And the adrenaline kicks in and then I attack a neutral by mistake after deploying my troops 450 kilometers from where I intended and then I fort 3 senior citizens to their Retirement Villa on an island on the other side of the world, well away from any possible danger. At least with clickies I suck really, really quickly.

The Elf's First Date

But there was another interesting development recently - I was invited to join a clan. Here is how I think that transpired: I was in a late night speed dubs game with some random dude (another aspect of expanding my horizons) and we were getting smoked. Badly. You know those games. Nothing goes right. Oh, you can blame the dice or whatever, but you just know, deep down, at the back of your primordial cortex, no matter what you do, the fates are against you and soon that big dinosaur is going to be using your femur as a tooth pick. Or your primordial spouse is going to bash your head in with that special pointy rock you found. Either way. End of story. But then The Elf is smacked with the inspiration stick. It doesn't usually work that way. Usually I'm in charge of the stupid stick. That night, even after my random partner was removed from the field of battle, we hammered the other team back and won. Thrilling. Seriously. Here was the other team's response to our come-from-behind victory:

"fuuuu...dge"

It was brief but heart felt I'm sure. Right on suckers!

Coming out of that game I think my random partner from that night figured I was good. And handed my name over to a clan leader looking for a good player. Instead they got me. The guy with the stupid stick. But since I didn't have any other invites to the prom I said sure. I hope they don't think I'm a cheap lay! 'Cause I'm not cheap.

Kindergarten Zombies

Now, this is no reflection on my clan-mates. At all. There are some great players in our clan, including our leader, but I would not be surprised if, in my brief tenure with them, I have recorded only a couple of wins in clan games. But as our clan has been rebuilding and adding a number of mid-ranked players like me here is what I think was happening in our first few games together: we were all reliving the first week of Kindergarten.

Your mom drops you off. Another woman with those breast things is there but she doesn't even remotely smell like your mom. You cry for 25 minutes. You realize suddenly that you have just peed your pants. You punch another little boy in the head who just peed himself and won't stop crying. You take a nap. Eat some paint. And as Post My-Parents-Are-Never-Coming-Back Syndrome sets in, you sit on the carpet with 22 other traumatized youngsters, as if you are bit players in a "Dawn of the CC Dead" movie. Moaning, gnawing and drooling ensue. Then you break for lunch.

I figure our clan will get better. We just need to eat more finger paint together.

Not An Intergalactic Kegger?!?!

And all of this leads me to my closing observation: there really are no short-cuts here at CC to being a good clan, or a good team, or a well rounded gamer. Just a lot of games and a lot of working things out.

This was brought home to be by a partner in a dubs tournament recently. I made some initial moves and my partner sent me a very helpful PM afterward. In the message he/she laid out some different strategies critiquing some of my early moves. Pretty helpful stuff and in hindsight I realized that I should have seen this myself. But more importantly it was his/her closing words that really struck me: doing it this way could increase your win % on this map by 5%. Five. Percent. When I first got here I would have figured that was nothing. After being in The Pit for six months now? Five Percent? Man. That is the world.

Huh. Maybe, just maybe, someday The Elf will give up the stupid stick for good! ~sees the skeptical stares~ Well. An Elf and dream can't he?!?!

About those nukes... I mean, Nuclear Spoils. As players investigate the option, some find the setting disturbingly luck based, some find it requires strategy, and others are still choosing to avoid them as though they're afraid of radioactive fallout. For example, the Conqueror's Cup inter-clan tournament is disallowing nuclear spoils, the same as freestyle and speed settings have been disallowed for previous Clan Ladders. Please do not be confused; the Cup is not part of the Clan Ladder, although there exists a potential that the games will count in the ladder.

With this setting, it becomes more apparent that random deals cards like it does the dice: sometimes a terr comes in batches. Whatever terrs are on the map are part of the entire pool, so it is possible for one terr to show up several times in a game, and even possible for the same terr to show up in several or all players' hands; the odds are the same for any card at any time in the game, although I have yet to hear of one player getting the same card twice in one hand.

Another interesting point about Nuclear Spoils is that the in-game statistics reveal more than the log will tell you immediately upon blasting an opponent (or oneself) off the map. The log will merely indicate that a territory was nuked, but the stats display immediately shows the number of territories, now reduced by one because of the nuke. The log will not indicate the terr-count change until the player takes the next turn. There are those who believe this is unfair, or untrue to the intention of the stats, which were placed, prior to the Nuclear Spoils setting, with the intention of revealing no more than the log will indicate. Now, the log may be behind the stats for as much as a full round (if you have unfortunately had to nuke yourself); but eventually the log will catch up to the stats display, indicating that the player who had 12 terrs at the start of his previous turn has 11 terrs at the start of the current turn.

Is a one-round (maximum) difference enough to make you wish to change something? If so, you can visit the Nuclear Spoils thread and make your point known.

I, on the other hand, believe this to be not much different than the ability to read an "owned" terr being cashed in a fog game; because of the +2 extra deploy, the log reveals information the ?? leaves in..errrr...question: which terrs does an opponent own? While the stats will display the terrcount, the stats do not indicate which terrs, but that bonus recipient lets one say, "Aha! Now I know where you are!" Granted, in that instance, the information is immediate upon the cash but.. well.. the stats info on nuclear spoils is equally immediate upon the cash.

The stats were not intended to reveal more than the log; fog setting was intended to make only the number of terrs readable by the log. In both instances, cashing a card can reveal a little more information than was originally intended. And? So?

To Nuke or not to Nuke, that is the question. Only you can answer it, for yourself.

For those of us who have suffered through bad dice, this one's for you....

The Invasion

Day 7, Dakar

Blue looked out over the shoreline. For the last two days, he had been camped here, with five other blues, awaiting instructions. Africa had been secured a few days ago, and the borders set. Across the stretch of ocean, an entire army of red sat at Sao Paulo, unaware of the plans of the warlords who ran the Great Blue War Machine. On day 5, Blue had been a part of the final push to move Green out of the African mainland completely, although word was they had secured Australia, which could prove to be a thorn in their side for the rest of this damned war. His commanding officer, Blue, had mentioned something to the effect of Flaming going on in some chat between Red and Green. Blue Command was looking to capitalize on this, and hoped to be able to place small amounts of reinforcements on Dakar until the time was right. Then, if all went according to plan, there would be a large influx of six, possibly SEVEN, reinforcements, and the true assault on the bastion of Red would begin. A squawk came over the loudspeakers set up over camp, informing all of the troops that it was time to change the watch. Blue looked one last time towards the ocean, wondering what was in store for him in the next few days.

Day 10, Dakar: invasion of Sao Paulo

The rumble of the motor came from all around him, causing Blue to think for a moment he was in some sort of living hell. The sides of the plane reverberated with rattling of the stores of ammo, foodstuffs, and other such items, creating a cacophony of clanging and banging. Blue Sergeant stood tall, and told the men about him that this moment would be the turning point, the first of many defeats for their enemies across the water, Red. All told, there were 14 blues on board, a frightening army considering Red's defences was a paltry 6. They were caught completely off guard by this assault. Whispers ran through the ranks of Red being led by a n00b general, a Cook maybe. Blue Command, of course, would never verify those rumours, but a refusal to answer was good enough for the troops. Blue gathered his gear. The final light went off, and the rear door of the plane opened. Below them, there was a field of green, the jungles of South America flowing past. Sao Paulo was lit up like a gigantic casino, flood lights crowding the air searching for the first signs of the enemy incursion. Then, all of a sudden (or so it seemed to Blue), the city was below them, and the order was given. Without another thought, Blue leapt clear of the plane, and freefell into his glory.

Blue was covered in blue gore. All about him, the bodies of his comrades, blues he had known for his entire life, were scattered like so many dice across a game board. The few left had been lead back to the shore, where they awaited the rescue ship. The fighting had been fierce, but even with overwhelming numbers, It was a lost cause. Out of the 14 who had travelled with Blue, he saw only three and himself. Red, on the other hand, now had an equal number, having only lost two. The first thought for Blue was frustration. The frustration of knowing you had lost, and also, that it might be a loss that you might not come back from. Blue Command was compromised, their troops for the front and borders spent of this assault. Already Green had been making overtures into Europe, and Red was crawling across North America.

A bullet snapped sand into Blues' face, waking him out of his daydreaming. He raised his weapon and returned fire, the small sandbar he was by providing meagre cover. The other blues all had the same forlorn look on their faces, like dogs which had lost their masters. Blue hoped his didn't look like that, too. More bullets flew past, and Blue realized Red was making a push. This was it, his final moment. Blue prepared himself, shook the cobwebs out of his head, and tensed his legs for a spring over the sandbar. As he lifted himself up, a blue grabbed his shoulder and pointed out over the ocean. The rescue ship was approaching, slowly yet surely.

Day 14, Nairobi

Blue stood aside four other blues, the last of his men. Blue Command had given up long ago, and there was talk from the others about going rogue, or "neutral" as it was called by some. Blue didn't think less of them for this. After the epic failure of the invasion of Sao Paulo, Red followed through with an assault that pushed aside the meagre defences left in place at Dakar. Slowly, Red pushed further into Africa, taking Cape Town and Johannesburg, then Cairo. Now, only one area stood, Nairobi. The last word heard from the Blue General was "Red’s Foed". To the east, in Dubai, a sizable army of Green camped, awaiting orders from their enigmatic leader. To the west, the deadly west, a large force of Red sat at Cairo, looking on with a bit of pity on what was left of the once great Blue Empire. Blue looked back at his men, and at the approaching horde. End game.

During the last couple weeks of 2009, Lindax collected nominations for the Best Tournament of 2009. After examining the list, 10 tournaments were chosen for a final vote. The Top 3 winners were all very close in the voting, with each officially 1 vote apart. Each winner has received a Contest Medal.

They have had their battles in numerous tournaments; now I decided to test their skill in a quiz. We have 5 participants who agreed to be part of the friendly battle: Tournament Legend Optimus Prime [OP], unique tournament titan barterer2002 [Bart], excellent Tournament Director Lindax [Lx], top tournament organizers/winners HighlanderAttack [HA] and Blitzaholic [Blitz]. Don't take the results too seriously, it's just a fun quiz where I asked everybody to answer honestly and not use help of forums/friends. If it was done, stays on their conscience and following data is also added just for statistics (which is also considered the biggest lie by some) and not for serious conclusions. What I know is that HA answered me 3 minutes after opening his message, OP maximum 10 minutes after opening it, Lx took about 25 minutes to answer, Bart maximum 30 minutes and Blitz a bit under 4 hours.

These are the questions that I asked and in the brackets is the amount of points received for correct answer(s).